Warriors 59!

Welcome warriors to the foothills of autumn! That shift in time that arrives quickly after the final sticky wasp weekend of sunshine and its attendant angry stinging insects. The nights are drawing in, but the compensation will be the return of the live gig scene. The bright lights and the neons of the cellarfulls of noise and the aching big venues will be drawing us like moths to the high decibel flame.

Gig season is upon us!

By the time we get to October we will be immersed in a blur of endless nights and maybe we will be highly concerned with gig etiquette like the upcoming Redditch singer, Lucy May Walker,  who was so fed up with people talking during her concerts that she has become a viral sensation by asking people to be quiet and laying out some rules for her shows ina communication…

But are rules what we want from gigs? Should people read the room or the riot act? Her plea for people to be quiet during gigs has ironically sparked a loud debate! Is it time to call time on people talking at gigs or is this just another land grab over the ribald fun of live music turning what was once a wild form into a librarian's convention?'

A band that may not be too concerned about people being noisy in their crowd are Fat White Family, whose intermittent career seems to have exploded back into life again. The band, who sparked all manner of other musical outfits into action, occupy a fascinating and off kilter place in the UK music trajectory and their zig zag wanderings have thrown up much interesting music. For some reason, they always feel like they have imploded since they exist in a space between chaos and creative anarchy, so it was great to see them back on the live stage as auto-destruct and thrilling as ever. Somehow they have survived ten years plus on the rock n roll frontline and their dirty disco has never sounded more urgent and better.

Another band that thrive on a certain madness are Evil Blizzard, who have dusted down their masks from their tea chests and returned with a new album. They sent over a new track to LTW as a taster from their upcoming wild adventures and it’s a cool twist in their muse and step in another direction which we are more than willing to go on. The new track could well be their best yet, and maybe its time to fully embrace this great band beyond their fierce fan base who happily boo the band’s each move in a self-deprecating in joke.

Prince Stash epitomised the sixties dandy with his swaggering cool as he hung at with the Beatles and Stones - now the world’s leading alchemist his life story sounds like a Hollywood movie as he details in this in-depth interview.

The Queen is back or at the end of her run of gigs. Siouxsie thrilled at the Troxy in London for two nights with her iconic glare in full. Where she will go from here, there was little sign. Were the gigs a final flurry or is there more to come? We hope so because the evidence from the Troxy was of an icon in full force.

In the mean time, we have the Lydia Lunch tour dates to look forward to. The iconic New Yorker has been at the frontline of dark and dangerous culture for decades and shows no sign of slipping off into comfy slippers yet.

I’m going out on tour in the spring of 2024 to talk about music . On my upcoming ‘Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock n Roll’ tour I will talk about my life in music, my best selling ‘The Art Of Darkness’ book, being the first person to interview Nirvana, inventing the word britpop and adventures on the post punk frontline…   

French singer/ songwriter Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier, AKA Christine and the Queens returned once again to Manchester, via a rearranged venue promoting his new album Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, to prove to the doubters that he, and they, really do mean it. Evidence read by MK Bennett

Erica Nockalls is known for her work with the Wonder Stuff, throwing exotic shapes whilst adding violin to Miles Hunt's rumbustious anthems. She also has her own aural adventures and her side project is growing a swift traction with its stark industrial soundscapes and emotive power. The new single is a brooding and powerful neo ballad but filtered through that aforementioned industrial clank and grind and its a stark and confessional piece, as her video underlines.

Sparklehorse’s posthumous fifth album has arrived 13 years after the death of its creator Mark Linkous and has been completed with loving care by family members and former collaborators. It’s a familiar blend of the fragile and the furious, finds Tim Cooper.

The Coral have been releasing wonderful records for decades now. The band sit on the edges of the mad parade and work at their own pace and their diamonds are hewn from the very soil of the Wirral just over the water from Liverpool. The band have returned with not one, but two albums of 60s-soaked psych-folk as they hit a new purple patch in their two-decade career. It really is their best work to date and tantamount to the bands innate talent. The melodies really shine and the textures and atmospheres of the songs are truly captivating.